Friday, July 1, 2016

Tamer Union Going Ad-free for July, Here's How

Tamer Union will experimentally be going ad-free for the month of July.

There are three primary reasons for doing this. The first and most important is that in this age it is an increasingly common hazard for ads to be compromised with malware, a complaint that has been levied against both smaller independent sites like Union, and large ones like Gematsu. I have no means of screening ads for malware; this is supposed to be handled by the Google AdSense team, but serving literally thousands of companies per day it seems they're unable to nip every instance of this in the bud.

The second reason is that the ads generally do not mesh well with the web design of the site, moreso on mobile than on desktop. Third and finally, the return on these ads is actually quite low per
impression, especially when taking into account the amount of space
that has to be dedicated to them. They don’t earn their keep relative to the compromises they force to justify keeping.

Naturally, there is a catch. Money has to come from somewhere. I am replacing Union's prior AdSense system with daily affiliate link plugs. Previously I experimented with affiliate link integration in our first Digivice buyer's guide, and the results were very compelling.

I've been cautioned that affiliate links can at times appear more intrusive than standard advertising, and veer into advertorial territory, but they aresaferthan running banner advertisements that are potentially infected with malware. Running daily affiliate links also provides an angle to keep better track of the Digimon collectibles market from, and publicly documenting different prices over time can contribute to a stabler market with less wildly fluctuating prices.

As always, we are open to Patreon donations. These help pay for things like our domain costs, NicoDouga membership for reporting on live events, and acquiring copies of interviews.